Weak passwords are a huge risk to your business and personal accounts.
To prevent the unethical attempts of hackers accessing your account, you'll need to pick a stronger password with at least eleven characters, and it should contain upper and lower case letters and special characters like * or & as well as numbers.
Here's how to make your passwords secure.
1. Don't use common passwords
Common passwords like '123456' 'qwerty' and 'password' are so weak that anyone can access your account even if they don't have any hacking skills. Avoid such passwords if you want the security of your account to be guaranteed.
2. Don't use personal information as your password
The first guess hackers make when they want to gain access into your account is your name or pet's name. This is a common practice among many people who use their names followed by numbers as their passwords.
3. Do not use words that appear in the dictionary
In a very short amount of time, hackers use powerful software that can test every word in a dictionary. Common substitutions like "5" for an "s" doesn't make your password stronger, hackers are smart enough to detect that in a very short time.
4. Use a longer password
SANS Institute, a security research organisation, recommends 15 characters in a password. But 11 or 12 characters is still sufficient to keep hackers off your account.
5. Use a phrase which you can easily remember
We often forget our passwords, and if they are long enough, it makes it even more easy to forget. Using a lengthy-phrase as your password can help a lot. For example, using a phrase like "Kenya is The best Country in the world Thank You Lord" to create a password like this one "KiTbCitwTYL001" can take hackers centuries to crack.